


Endings

by Fjodor



Series: One-shots in one place [6]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Everyone is Dead, Mist, world is empty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-24 03:07:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17696489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fjodor/pseuds/Fjodor
Summary: The world is death, only one person is left in alive.





	Endings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SoaringJe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoaringJe/gifts).



The silence made it real clear, no-one was out there. There was a definitive answer to that old song, there was no-one out there, no longer. It had not happened from one day to the next, in the beginning, it had been more an afterthought than anything else. Not a soul acted when they started noticing, letting the pieces fall where they may. This had been the mindset up till the end. Till it was only them left. Alone, not exactly forgotten, but as there was no one to remember them they might as well be. 

 

It was difficult to gauge how they looked now. The last reflective surface had been a while back not only in distance but also time. For as long as they had been travelling on their own. It was still pretty certain that they hadn't left the continent yet. Where they were exactly was a bit more of a mystery. It had snowed in the recent past, some days ago. They couldn’t pinpoint time much closer than that. But snow gave them some information. They weren't moving as fast towards the equator as had been the plan when there was still a couple of them left.

 

When the radio died in their end they had waited for a couple of days to see if the static would ever turn into a voice again. It never did again, that had been the point where they stopped counting days. The date had become of a more unnecessary nature. It wasn't like she had been following along with them all that much before this all went down. But the voice used to tell them every morning and evening what the date was. They remembered the sound of thin paper being ripped and her reading the date and a joke. Most of them weren't all that funny. But there has been a couple of good ones in the time they had talked. It was silent now though like most things were.

 

Silent.

 

It was a good descriptor for the world at large. Anything that could make noise was kinda stopped. It started with the smaller insects, slowly crawling it's way up the food chain. It went through the small mammals, medium ones all the way up to them, humans. Surpassing them taking a shot at every living moving thing it could get’s its talons stuck in. When the rhino’s started dying there was a big push to save them but in the process, a lot of other animals were ignored when they kicked the bucket to extinction.

 

They had seen it on the news when the last one died, it had been the focus of the world press for a whole day or two. But they moved on, to different places and different stories. The world was a miserable place if you were to turn on the news back then. Now there was no use to turning on the devices, they did it from time to time though. You could get lucky and find a channel that had been programmed to run a list of programs indefinitely. The day they had found a channel that had been doing reruns of Friends was one of the happiest they had been in a while. Just hearing the voices was something to hold onto, they would be tied to the lips of Courteney Cox. But food would run out and they had to move on.

 

They had never really thought about the distance they travelled. On occasion, they would see a road sign that listed the distance to the next city and the distance they had gone already from where they had come before. The last sign they’d passed was one pointing to Cunoir 50 miles. That sign had been behind them for at least one sleep. Time was difficult, there was just no way of seeing how or where the sun was. A while ago before the last city, maybe even before, there had been a thick mist settling around them. Now there was not only an absence of sound from outside sources, but their own was also dampened by this mist.

 

‘Taking a car would have made this easier,’ they thought, not for the first time, when they passed the innumerable amount of cars on the way. It would have been a safe bet that most of them had some fuel left.

 

‘I hope that we remember why we aren’t taking cars places?’ they asked themselves as another car was passed. Of course, they did it had not been long since the final dawn of humanity had set in that they had set off on their journey. They had walked down the block until they had seen a car standing in the middle of a crossroads. It was relatively undamaged and from a distance, it looked abandoned.

 

That had been a mistake, thinking it was unoccupied. Opening the door, letting the rotting remains slip out making them gag. They thought they knew how quick they could run before, they had been so so wrong. If they had been asked to do a five-minute mile before for anything it would have been impossible. But now, now they had covered that distance and more going all the way back to where they had started earlier that morning. Now when they looked out over the streets they saw the cars, but also knew what was contained within the steel coffins.

 

Walking along the highway, they could never really enjoy the walk. The forest that lined the road was obscured. There was no sound of birds flying around or deer running in them. Occasionally they would hear the sound of a stream. The never-ending continues rushing of water was one of the few sounds that interrupted the absolute solemn nature had created around them. They had heard it coming for a while now, it was quite easy when there was nothing else that could drown it out. They had checked the water supply they were carrying and seeing it still half full from when they had filled it up in the morning with the snow, there was no reason to deviate from her current track. ‘No point getting lost for no reason,’ she thought as another sign came into view.

 

‘Curnoir 10 miles,’ it read.

 

“Wowie,” they said as the sign passed overhead. It was just one of the markers that could be counted on to appear every once in a while. They had wondered how many of those had been made and placed around the country, cause it was one of the few things that could not be mass-produced easily. As all of them were more or less unique it would have been a tedious job for a group of people. As they thought about it more and more there was some appreciation that grew for those people. It had probably been a source of money for those people doing not the most difficult job in the world.

 

The rushing of water faded again into the background of silence. ‘Right, I’m all alone,’ they though slowing their steps down a bit till the car’s hood was next to them as they stopped. Poping their backpack off they rummaged through it eventually fishing up a packet of dried nuts. They were probably the tastiest food that they carried with them and would be surprisingly good for energy.

 

Standing there in the middle of the highway, surrounded by half covered cars with snow, they took up the debate again. If they were really the last living. Should they be respecting the silence that had set around them or should they be making the sound to remind the planet that there was still one left. Again, respecting silence won out.

 

Strutting along, they noticed the first signs of civilisation popping up again. The thick layer of trees that surrounded the highway, gave way to the backyards of some houses. As the mist was still as everpresent as before, they couldn’t see the houses that stood back there. They were just a silent witness walking though. Noting the sameness of the air around them and the silence it brought.

 

It was all the world had left.

 

Silence.


End file.
